RIGHTS GROUPS TRAVEL TO HAITI TO ASSESS HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION

Delegation of Experts to Examine Aid in Port-au-Prince and Central Plateau Region

(Boston, New York, Port-au-Prince, Washington DC, March 3, 2010)—A delegation of human rights experts will be traveling to Haiti from March 9th-12th to assess the human rights and aid situation on the ground there following the earthquake that struck on January 12, 2010.  Representatives from prominent human rights organizations—the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law and the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights (RFK Center)—will join experts from Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) and Zanmi Lasante/Partners In Health in Haiti to conduct what is the first of a series of assessments that will span the coming year.

The team will be conducting its assessments through interviews and onsite visits both inside and outside of Port-au-Prince, focusing on towns that have received a high volume of internally displaced persons since the earthquake.  The trip comes in advance of the March 23rd hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, where BAI, CHRGJ, the Institute for Justice and Democracy, RFK Center, Zanmi Lasante/Partners In Health will provide testimony aimed at encouraging the Commission to formally investigate the human rights impacts of post-earthquake aid on behalf of the Organization of American States.  It also precedes the much-anticipated March 31st Haiti Donors’ Conference at the United Nations headquarters in New York, where future aid to Haiti will be discussed at length.  The groups recently issued a list of concrete recommendations outlining a rights-based approach to aid delivery in advance of that conference, and have a long history of working on aid and human rights issues in Haiti.

Members of the organizations going to Haiti will be available for comment and interview prior to, during, and immediately following the trip to Haiti. To contact them, please see the information listed here:

Monika Kalra Varma, Executive Director, RFK

+1-202-460-4681

Meg Satterthwaite, Faculty Director, CHRGJ

+1-347-277-5035

Liz Sepper, Center Fellow, CHRGJ

+1-617-767-6176

Veerle Opgenhaffen, Senior Program Director, CHRGJ

+1-917-562-1972

Assessment team in Haiti, March 9-12

+011509-3692-2484

For more information about these organizations, please visit their websites: www.chrgj.org, www.pih.org, www.ijdh.org, www.rfkcenter.org.